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U.C.BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


University  of  California  •  Berkeley 

THE  PETER  AND  ROSELL  HARVEY 
MEMORIAL  FUND 


HIRAM  W.  JOHNSON 

Machine  Smasher,  Constructive  Statesman 

PROGRESSIVE  CANDIDATE   FOR 
VICE  -  PRESIDENT 


"We  have  nominated  the  only  type  of  man 
who  ever  ought  to  be  nominated  for  the  Vice- 
Presidency;  we  have  nominated  a  man  fit  at  the 
moment  to  be  President  of  the  United  States." 

— Theodore  Roosevelt. 


Hiram  W.  Johnson,   the  Fighting  Governor 

of  California,  Who  Has  Waged  a  Long 

and  Winning  War  Against 

Political  Corruption 


In  barely  two  years  to  have  set  a  new  mark,  first  as  a  fight- 
ing machine  smasher,  then  as  a  constructive  statesman,  and  fin- 
ally as  an  overshadowing  national  personality — this  is  the  unique 
record  of  Hiram  W.  Johnson,  Governor  of  California  and  Pro- 
gressive nominee  for  Vice-President  of  the  United  States. 

For  forty  years  prior  to  Hiram  Johnson's  now  famous  cru- 
sade, the  ostensibly  self-governing  State  of  California  had  actu- 
ally been  ruled  by  the  political  bureau  of  a  private  corporation, 
the  Southern  Pacific  Railway  Company.  This  bureau  was  the 
originator  in  the  United  States  of  the  so-called  "system,"  the 
partnership  between  politically-privileged  business  and  commer- 
cially-subsidized politics. 

Built  by  the  Government,  endowed  with  huge  land  grants 
and  capitalized  by  Government  guarantees,  the  Pacific  railroads 
were  in  politics  from  the  beginning;  first  to  get  these  privileges, 
and  afterward  to  escape  the  obligations  that  these  privileges  im- 
posed. 

Their  example  called  into  being  similar  machines  in  other 
States.  Their  land  lobby,  long  maintained  at  Washington,  first 
established  land-grabbing  on  a  national  scale. 

In  California,  they  maintained  the  whole  political  organiza- 
tion of  the  State.  Their  salaried  agents  openly  sat  on  the  floor 
of  the  Legislature,  and  frankly  dictated  legislation.  They  domi- 
nated political  conventions  and  controlled  nominations,  includ- 
ing, in  fact,  especially  judges.  The  recognized  avenue  to  politi- 
cal preferment  was  the  favor  of  the  railroad  company.  The  ac- 
cepted sentence  of  political  .extinction  was  its  hostility.  There 
were,  to  be  sure,  individuals  who  successfully  maintained  their 
independence  in  public  life,  and  there  had  been,  for  three  years 
prior  to  the  crusade  of  1910,  an  organized  opposition  known  as 
the  Lincoln-Roosevelt  League,  which  had  achieved  partial  vic- 
tory in  1908  and  had  obtained  from  the  Legislature  in  1909  an 
imperfect  direct  primary  law. 

This  league,  in  the  Spring  of  1910,  called  on  Hiram  Johnson 
to  accept  its  indorsement  as  candidate  for  the  Republican  nomi- 
nation for  Governor.  Johnson  had  already  made  a  brilliant 
reputation  as  a  lawyer  in  Sacramento  and  in  San  Francisco, 
and  he  had  attracted  State-wide  attention  by  his  conduct  on  the 


San  Francisco  graft  prosecutions.  Associated  with  the  prosecu- 
tions for  a  short  time  in  the  beginning,  he  had  publicly  with- 
drawn from  his  employment,  at  the  time  of  the  campaign  for 
re-ejection  of  the  Langdon-IJency  administration  of  the  District 
Attorney's  office,  in  order  to  enter  into  the  campaign  free  of  the 
suspicions  of  personal  interest.  Afterward,  wjieii  Francis  J. 
Heney  was  being  worn  to  the  breaking  point  by  the  strain  of 
fighting  a  dozen  lawyers  at  once,  each  chosen  for  his  talents  IP.  a 
particular  sort  of  legal  obstruction,  Johnson  was  repeatedly 
urged  by  the  League  of  Justice  to  take  up  part  of  the  burden  and 
name  his  own  fee,  but  he  felt  himself  obligated  by  this  public 
statement  to  persist  in  his  refusal.  Matt  I.  Sullivan  was  making 
a  final  appeal  and  had  just  received  final  refusal,  when  the  news 
came  that  Heney  had  been  shot  down  in  open  court. 

"That  settles  it,"  said  Johnson.  "I  don't  want  any  fee;  I  will 
take  the  case  with  you,  Sullivan,  and  we  will  finish  Heney' s  work 
for  him." 

And  they  did  it  with  such  success  that  Abe  Reuf,  arch-grafter 
of  California,  was  convicted  and  is  now  in  the  penitentiary. 

The  qualities  shown  in  this  service,  the  remarkable  cam- 
paigning ability  developed  in  the  two  elections  for  the  rescue  of 
San  Francisco  from  the  grafter,  and  the  fact  that  he  was  the  one 
man  connected  with  the  graft-crusade  whose  personal  popularity 
even  the  poisoned  press  of  San  Francisco  bad  never  been  able  to 
affect,  marked  Hiram  Johnson  as  the  one  man  best  equipped  for 
the  larger  campaign  of  redeeming  the  State.  But  again  he  was 
reluctant;  while  he  had  alwa37s  been  active  in  public  affairs,  John- 
son had  acquired  in  his  youth  an  invincible  aversion  to  personal 
candidacy  for  pffice.  Possibly  the  conviction  that  it  was  a  for- 
lorn hope,  in  which  some  one  must  make  the  preliminary  fight, 
but  in  which  personality  was  impossible,  was  the  strongest  in- 
ducement in  overcoming  this  aversion.  At  any  rate,  after  a 
struggle,  the  dramatic  intensity  of  which  will  never  be  forgotten 
by  those  who  participated  in  it,  he  finally  consented  to  "go  to  the 
bat."  From  that  moment  of  final  assent  there  was  never  any 
hesitation. 

California  is  a  State  a  thousand  miles  long.  Most  of  it  is  in- 
accessible by  railroad — mountainous,  with  desert  coast  and  in- 
terior plain.  It  is  the  most  varied  State  topographically  in  the 
Union.  The  mere  physical  task  of  preaching  a  new  crusade  to 
sucji  a  State  seemed  almost  insuperable.  Johnson  solved  it  by  a 
seven  months'  automobile  carnpaign,  in  which  he  travelled 
18,000  miles,  speaking  on  an  average  of  five  times  a  day,  mostly 
in  the  open  air,  and  meeting  the  people  face  to  face.  In  literally 
every  hamlet  and  cross  road,  as  well  as  in  the  towns  and  cities  of 
California,  the  primary  campaign  was  made  on  a  single  issue — 
the  overthrow  of  the  Southern  Pacific  machine.  At  first  tlicp* 
was  little  publicity  beyond  the  local  meetings,  but  fjnajly  tttf' 


whole  State  was  aroused,  and  even  Johnson  became  convinced, 
as  he  put  it,  that  "the  revolution  was  on."  From  that  time  on 
he  concluded  every  speech  with  the  same  sentence,  the  sentence 
that  changed  thp  history  of  California.  It  was  this:  "Without 
vainglory  or  boasting,  I  say  to  you  that  I  am  going  to  be  Gov- 
ernor of  California,  and  when  I  am  Governor,  I  am  going  to  kick 
out  of  this  Government  William  F.  Herrin  and  f}ie  Southern 
Pacific  Railroad." 

A  purely  constructive  campaign,  so  far,  without  a  construct- 
ive policy  in  it;  but  it  concentrated  a  crusade,  and  (Demonstrated 
a  remarkable  personality.  The  dominant  note  of  Hiram  John- 
son is  sincerity.  He  is  a  remarkably  magnetic  speaker  pf  the 
downright  fighting  type.  In  the  highest  places,  among  ttje  na- 
tion's greatest  orators,  he  leaves  an  impression  which  stands 
out  permanently  in  the  memory.  TJic  same  impression  he  left 
on  the  hustings  of  California — the  feeling  "This  man  means  it, 
arid  can  be  trusted  to  do  it."  It  is  a  quality,  not  merely  of 
oratory,  but  of  the  man. 

Harris  Wejnstock,  one  of  the  most  eminent  citjzens  of  Cali- 
fornia, says:  "I  have  known  Hiram  Johnson  intimately  since  he 
was  a  baby.  I  have  seen  him  under  every  moral  test  which  a 
man  or  a  boy  can  face,  and  I  have  never  known  him  to  fail  to 
rise  to  the  full  measure  of  every  test." 

This  immediately  recognized  sincerity  of  character,  re- 
flected in  speech,  made  the  simple  crusade  of  a  single  promise 
the  most  remarkable  political  revival  ever  known  in  the  West. 
A  magazine  writer  has  described  Johpson  as  "a  political  revival- 
ist;" another  writer,  that  he  saw  in  Johnson's  meetings  in  the 
California  campaign,  "a  moral  fervor,  fusing  t^c  assemblies  into 
almost  a  spiritual  frenz}T,  for  a  second — a  mass  phenprnenpn — 
I  have  rarely,  if  ever,  witnessed  outside  of  religious  meetings." 

A  "political  revivalist"  conducting  a  campaign  on  the  single 
destructive  issue  of  "kicking  pqt"  one  man  and  his  henchmen 
is  scarcely  the  type  from  which  to  expect  constructive  states- 
manship. But  Governor  Johnson's  record  in  this  respect  has 
jiecn  no  less  remarkable  than  liis  achievement  as  a  campaigner. 
Johnson  was  nominated  at  the  primary  by  a  triumphant  vote. 
The  Lincoln-Roosevelt  League  became  the  regular  Republican 
organization  of  the  State.  Its  factional  platform,  a  rnere  declara- 
tion of  war  on  the  machine,  was  expanded  as  a  party  platform 
into  probably  the  most  comprehensive  program  of  concrete  re- 
forms ever  embodied  in  a  single  State  platform.  Johnson  made 
his  campaign  for  election  still  on  the  "kicking  out"  issue,  but 
also  with  the  pledge  that  if  a  progressive  governor  and  legislature 
were  elected  the  definite  pledges  of  the  platform  would  be  en- 
acted into  law.  He  was  elected  by  the  largest  majority  ever 
given  a  candidate  for  Governor  in  California,  and  within  four 
months  of  the  day  of  Ids  inauguration  every  pledge  pf  his  rad- 


ically  comprehensive  platform  was  either  enacted  into  law  or 
submitted  to  the  people  as  a  constitutional  amendment.  The 
amendments  were  passed,  an  extra  session  of  the  Legislature; 
enacted  the  necessary  supplementary  laws,  and  within  one  year 
of  the  inauguration  every  pledge  of  the  platform  was  actually 
operative  in  law.  It  was  the  complete  governmental  transfor- 
mation in  the  shortest  time  ever  known  in  an  American  State. 
M.  Oster,  the  French  publicist,  described  it  as  the  only  example 
he  knew  of  in  the  history  of  the  English-speaking  world  in  which 
governmental  reform  was  accomplished  with  what  he  patriot- 
ically described  as  "French  thoroughness." 

From  the  most  boss-ridden  to  the  most  progressive  State  in 
the  Union,  governmsntal  California  was  transformed  in  a  single 
year,  and  the  crusade  of  California  is  now  being  preached  to  the 
Nation.  The  doctrine  of  California  is  the  aspiration  of  the 
Nation.  The  platform  had  called  for  the  initiative,  referendum 
and  recall,  the  direct  election  of  Senators,  a  shorter  ballot,  the 
simplification  of  the  primary  law,  the  abolition  of  the  "party 
circle"  on  the  ballot  and  the  non-partisan  nomination  of  judges, 
women's  suffrage,  county  home  rule,  simplified  criminal  pro- 
cedure, prison  reform,  non-partisanship  in  appointments,  busi- 
ness administrative  reforms,  conservation  legislation,  the  ex- 
tension of  the  powers  of  the  railroad  commission,  a  public  ser- 
vice commission  and  a  workmen's  compensation  act. 

Surely  an  ambitious  program  for  a  single  session  of  the 
Legislature  less  than  three  months  in  length.  Yet  all  these 
things  were  passed,  as  well  as  a  considerable  amount  of  social 
legislation  not  in  the  platform,  including  an  eight-hour  law  for 
women  and  a  local  option  law.  Theodore  Roosevelt  referred 
to  it  at  the  time  as  "the  most  comprehensive  program  of  con- 
structive legislation  ever  enacted  at  a  single  session  of  the  Legis- 
lature of  any  American  State." 

The  most  powerful  single  force  in  making  this  legislative 
record  was  Governor  Johnson's  inaugural  address,  in  which  he 
broke  all  precedent  by  agreeing  to  do  as  Governor  exactly  what 
he  had  promised  to  do  as  candidate.  Administratively,  the  pub- 
lic's faith  was  also  kept.  The  old  machine  and  its  henchmen 
were  ousted,  graft  was  unearthed  and  eradicated,  economy  and 
efficiency  secured,  the  prisons,  reformatory  and  charitable  in- 
stitutions put  on  a  far  better  basis,  and,  in  short,  a  new  era  was 
established  of  government  for  the  people,  instead  of  for  the 
politicians. 

This  is  but  a  skeleton  sketch  of  only  two  years  of  Governor 
Johnson's  career,  but  they  are  the  two  years  into  which  the  prep- 
aration and  the  qualifications  of  all  the  rest  have  gone.  Born  in 
Sacramento,  forty-five  years  ago,  Hiram  Johnson  attended  the 
public  schools  and  the  State  University,  and  practiced  law  with 
brilliant  success,  first  in  Sacramento  and  then  in  San  Francisco, 


He  was  generally  known  as  the  best  trial  lawyer  in  California. 
He  lives  in  a  beautiful  home  on  top  of  Russian  Hill  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, set  on  the  summit  of  a  literal  cliff,  up  which  one  clambers 
by  zigzag  stairways  set  against  the  rock.  From  the  windows 
or  from  the  terraced  Italian  garden,  which  Mrs.  Johnson  with 
infinite  patience  has  caused  to  grow  on  top  of  that  rocky  cliff, 
one  looks  down  on  San  Francisco  Bay  and  the  Golden  Gate,  and 
across  to  Mt.  Tamalpais  and  the  shore  opposite.  There  is  no 
finer  view  in  the  world.  The  Johnsons  have  two  vigorous  Amer- 
ican boys,  both  of  whom  are  the  chums  of  their  parents.  It  is 
a  pleasanter  life  than  the  whirl  of  politics  can  offer,  and  one  does 
not  wonder  that  both  the  Governor  and  Mrs.  Johnson  prefer  it. 

Success  has  not  turned  the  head  of  Governor  Johnson.  He 
is  unaffectedly  democratic,  and  hates  snobbery  and  show;  even 
his  meteoric  rise  to  fame  he  takes  humbly,  as  a  responsibility 
and  an  opportunity  for  service.  But  a  personality  so  unique 
cannot  be  confined.  The  whole  nation  now  knows  of  Governor 
Johnson,  representatives  of  every  State  have  seen  and  have 
heard  him  at  the  National  Convention  this  Summer,  and  tested 
his  mettle.  The  whole  nation  will  hear  him  soon  and  will  doubt- 
less come  as  much  under  the  spell  of  his  winning  personality  as 
California  has.  And  the  nation  will  approve  the  unanimous 
judgment  of  the  convention — that  Hiram  W.  Johnson  is  the  one 
man  in  all  America  best  fitted  to  preach,  with  Theodore  Roose- 
velt, the  new  doctrine  of  popular  rule. 

Perhaps  the  finest  tribute  to  Governor  Johnson  that  has  ap- 
peared was  in  the  speech  of  acceptance  of  Theodore  Roosevelt 
when  he  and  Johnson  faced  the  cheering  thousands  at  the  Chi- 
cago Convention.  The  moment  after  their  nomination  Colonel 
Roosevelt  said: 

"I  have  a  peculiar  feeling  toward  Governor  Johnson.  Nearly 
two  years  ago  after  the  election  of  1910  when  what  I  had  striven 
to  accomplish  in  New  York  had  come  to  nothing,  and  when  my 
friends  the  enemy  exulted — possibly  prematurely — over  what 
had  befallen  me,  Governor  Johnson,  in  the  flush  of  his  own 
triumph,  having  just  won  out,  wrote  me  a  letter,  which  I  shall 
hand  on  to  my  children,  and  children's  children  because  of  what 
the  letter  contains,  and  because  of  the  man  who  wrote  it;  a  letter 
of  trust  and  belief,  a  letter  of  ardent  championship  from  the  sol- 
dier who  was  at  that  moment  victorious,  toward  his  comrade 
who  at  that  moment  had  been  struck  down.  In  Governor  John- 
son we  have  a  man  whose  every  word  is  made  good  by  the  deeds 
that  he  has  done.  A  man,  who  as  the  head  of  a  great  State  has 
practically  applied  in  that  State  for  the  benefit  of  the  people  of 
that  State  the  principles  which  wre  intend  to  apply  throughout 
the  Union  as  a  whole.  We  have  nominated  the  only  type  of 
man  who  ever  ought  to  be  nominated  for  the  Vice-Presidency; 
we  have  nominated  a  man  fit  at  the  moment  to  be  President  of 
the  United  States." 


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